Pulling the curtain on the 2017 season and looking forward to 2018: Issues & Answers

We're deep into January, and already the days are beginning to lengthen. College football's regular season has been over for nearly two months. The bowls are yesterday's news.

The 2017 season was eventful, wasn't it?

Gary Andersen spent two and a half seasons driving the Oregon State football program into the pit of misery, and then quit.

The first and last games of Willie Taggart's Oregon coaching tenure came in the same three-month period.

Two years from being one of the best FCS programs west of the Mississippi, Portland State spent the 2017 season as one of the worst.

I'm already looking forward to 2018, to see what first-year head coaches Mario Cristobal and Jonathan Smith can do at Oregon and Oregon State respectively, and whether Portland State coach Bruce Barnum will justify the school's decision to stick with him.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying Issues & Answers will cease operation for now. I hope to bring it back in the fall. We'll see. Anybody who promises anything at my stage of life is whistling into the wind.

I owe a debt of gratitude to the hard-working journalists around the Pac-12 who spend impossibly long hours in sometimes miserable conditions to keep the public informed about the teams they cover. For them, that is the payoff. They don't do it for the money or because they love rubbing shoulders with Mike Leach, Chris Petersen or Kyle Whittingham.

It's a treat for me to read what they produce and share it.

This column by Kurt Kragthorpe of the Salt Lake Tribune about the death of Washington State quarterback Tyler Hilinski is a case in point.

Kragthorpe writes that the tragedy is another reminder there is a human being underneath the helmet and the pads.

Amen.

To those of you who read and comment respectively, who point out fixable errors and share insights that broaden the discussion, thanks for joining me on the journey.

There are still things happening in the world of college football. The February signing date is fast approaching. I encourage you to keep up with that by reading The O's hard-working Andrew Nemec.

Cristobal still is filling out his coaching staff. The O's Andrew Greif will be on top of that.

In another part of my other working life I cover track and field. When I started, I mostly just was concerned with the UO track program, which is to that sport what Alabama is to college football.

But in the past two decades, a number of world-class professional training groups have taken root in the state. These people are among the best anywhere at what they do. They are world champions and Olympic medalists.

There has been more to keep up with. It's a full-time job in itself, and the 2018 indoor season is already in full swing.

I'll need a couple weeks just to catch up before launching my daily track aggregation post.